Thursday, February 17, 2011

Welcome to our world

I have been working my courage up to do this for a very long time now. It has taken me 2 years to come to a place where I can embrace being a Mom to a child with Down Syndrome and begin to speak about the joys and the challenges with growing confidence. When Jack was born, it felt like my world was coming to an end. So many fears for the future. How will living with a disabled child impact our family, my marriage? Will this child be able to live life to the fullest? How could it be possible that we would be blessed with a beautiful new baby that was anything less than perfect?

There has been a lot of grief to wade through and a sometimes painful process of allowing God and Jack to right many of my own misperceptions. We did not know that Jack had Down Syndrome until he was born. There are reliable tests that can tell you a baby's likelyhood of having Down Syndrome but we figured that it would not change the outcome for us. I think that what I was really thinking was that it would never happen to us. The fear of having a less than perfect baby is so great. When terror strikes, the stats say that 92% of women who find out there baby has Down Syndrome choose to abort.

There have been huge challenges that I will hopefully be able to share with you as this blog progress and there have been some extremely stretching days for me but for the most part Jack has brought a tremendous amount of joy to our lives. I cannot imagine life without him. When I think back to when Jack was still in the womb. What would I have done if I had known? I understand the paralyzing fear that news like this brings and after having walked through the valley I want to say is that there is hope. Don't be afraid. Life with Down Syndrome is more than livable when you open yourself up to God's grace. Jack is an amazing kid. We are happy and blessed to have him in our family to love us and to show us a different way of living. One where we stop the comparisons and wait with anticipation for what God will bring out of each one of us in every moment; how to live fully without being afraid.
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